


Such a Pathetic Pair (Loose Affiliation, Part 2)

by spuffyduds



Series: Loose Affiliation [2]
Category: due South
Genre: Angst, Episode Related, M/M, Unresolved Sexual Tension
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-01-06
Updated: 2010-01-06
Packaged: 2017-10-05 22:03:01
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,736
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/46460
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/spuffyduds/pseuds/spuffyduds
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
      <p>Set in and around "Victoria's Secret Part II" and "Letting Go."</p>
    </blockquote>





	Such a Pathetic Pair (Loose Affiliation, Part 2)

**Author's Note:**

> Set in and around "Victoria's Secret Part II" and "Letting Go."

Weird thing is, the guilt doesn't hit until later. Of course it's there in his head, _Jesus I did this_, but Benny's down and there's no _time_. He's got to get there, get to him, how bad is it? And for a minute Benny's making sense, okay he says something crazy about he should be with her but it's the making sense kind of crazy at least, but then he's _chanting_ something, fuck, something about daylight dolphins, and he's _twitching_, not good. And for a second Ray thinks _he's_ hallucinating because it looks like the Mountie coat is growing out of Benny's shoulders, huh? But it's blood, a widening wingspan, way too much, _fuck_. One of the guys is on the radio yelling about officer down, they might call you a doorman at the station house but when you're down you're an officer.

So, sirens and yelling and he doesn't even remember how he gets to the hospital. And it's not until Benny's in surgery and there's not shit Ray can do that it really slams him, right there in the corridor, Jesus I did this. His knees start to go and he slumps sideways against the wall and throws up. Some poor orderly comes with a bucket and mop and says, _thanks_, man, and all Ray can do is sit there against the wall saying sorry sorry sorry.

************************************************

But Benny gets better. It's a good hospital and the guy was in some kind of superhero health to start with, and every Vecchio in Chicago has been bugging the hell out of God, and whatever reason, Benny gets better.

And feels like he has to confess. Ray's sitting there, having fucking SHOT the guy, hello, and Benny starts talking about how he was going to go with her. Which, yeah, Ray had figured out and doesn't particularly want to go over again. But Benny's got to get it out, stammering about how he wasn't thinking clearly at the time and he was somehow assuming that Ray's bail, Ray's _house_ would be okay because now people knew that Victoria _existed,_ that none of this was Ray's plan or Ray's fault, but of course that probably wasn't really clear to anybody except the two of them, and the bail was on Fraser anyway and he was in fact skipping on it even if he was innocent of the charges, and--

"I got it, Fraser. Shut up."

He shuts up, thank you God, and slides back off into the drug haze where he is most of the time this week. Every now and then he flinches halfway awake and mumbles something stupid, like, Dief, Twinkies are not even _food_. But mostly just sleeps.

Ray falls asleep in the chair, most days. He's got a lot of leave saved up, and the only time he's been back to the station house since the train, he just walked in, went straight to the supply closet, grabbed the big glass pickle jar they always set up on Elaine's desk after something happened to one of the precinct guys. (Shot or stabbed in a domestic, heart attack behind the wheel of the squad car, ate his gun and left a widow…) He set it down on Elaine's desk, hard, wrote FRASER in magic marker on a piece of masking tape and stuck it on the jar, under the faded Post-It that said "Please donate for." Looked around the squad room at everybody one by one, thinking, just try to say I can't do this for him. Just try. And Huey came over and opened his wallet.

*******************************

Sometimes he goes home, just because he gets too cramped up from being in the chair. Mostly though, he just sits there, drifting in and out of sleep, shifting so the cramps at least move around, and thinking, funny that Fraser has to confess. Because Ray keeps remembering those few seconds, and he's not totally sure he didn't do it on purpose. Not shooting Fraser, Jesus no, the guy put on some kind of not-even-human burst of speed at the last second, no _way_ he should have been in front of that bullet. But…it seemed logical at the time that she should have had a gun, he THOUGHT she had a gun, everything was happening so fast and he thought he saw it. But when they found it, later, a long way down the platform, he was surprised at how not surprised he was. So, maybe he kind of knew, because even from where he was he could see her smiling, and the way Benny was running—not running after, running _to_\--and maybe he kind of knew. Maybe he kind of shot at her smile.

It's weird, because even with his good Catholic upbringing—or because of his good Catholic upbringing—he has no urge to confess this to Benny. At all.

***********************************

Getting him home is stupidly hilarious, with _both_ of them shot. Not exactly even, because Benny _got_ him shot but didn't shoot him. But, closer to even, anyway. They're both wobbly and cranky and pretty much worthless, and have to take turns sort of propping each other up to even do something as simple as pour a bowl of cereal, and it's just…funny. The second night at Benny's place, after they've had the "No YOU take the bed I'LL take the couch" argument again, Ray looks at Benny, looks at himself, starts just giggling, says, "Ain't we a pair, raggedy man."

"Ain't—what?"

"You know. Thunderdome? Tina Turner?"

Benny just gives him that blank Canadian blinky look.

So the next day Ray gets Frannie to bring over his TV and VCR and pick up the movie for him, and after he finally manages to get her to stop hovering over Fraser and out the door, they sit down to it with chips and dip. Ray has to give him a little background from the first two movies, and Benny keeps going off into these monologues about how a civilization powered by pig excrement would have air quality problems, and he's not sure that a society of feral children would have such a strangely devolved language within one generation, and finally Ray has to just explain, "Benny. This movie is about Tina Turner's legs."

"Oh." He considers that for a moment and concludes, "Yes, I can see that, Ray." And after that they're watching it properly.

After the credits they're just slumped in the couch, and Ray's ready for Fraser to clear off to the bed so he can sleep (Ray has, so far, won all the I'LL take the couch arguments, but not without a lot of effort.) But Fraser keeps staring at the blank screen, reaching up to rub at his neck every now and then.

"Sit on the floor," Ray says.

"Hmmm?"

"Sit."

After some stiff staggery rearrangement Benny's sitting, and Ray starts working on his neck.

"You don't have to—"

"I can't go to sleep with you grabbing at your neck. Shut up and relax."

"Okay." Ray's getting the knots out and Jesus there are a lot of them. Even with the pain pills the guy is tightly wrapped. After he's loosened up the neck a lot he does the shoulders and starts on the back, working carefully around the wound and trying not to remember what it looks like, an unpleasant silvery pink.

"That's really…that's nice, Ray. Did you pick up some techniques from the physical therapist?"

"Nah, I used to do this for my mom after she got home from work. She'd give me a quarter for a comic book. Turns out I should have been paying _her_ for teaching me how...it's catnip for the ladies."

"No doubt."

It's starting to work, Fraser's letting his head slump on the inside of Ray's knee and Ray's about to tell him to get up and go to bed before he falls asleep there on the floor, but all of a sudden he's completely rigid again, muscles locked up under Ray's fingers.

"Ray?"

"_What_?!?"

"I have to tell you—I haven't been fully—I have to tell you something."

"No, you don't. Just relax already," Ray's still trying to loosen up the muscles again but it's hopeless, he might as well be massaging a robot at this point, and whatever Benny's got to say he's pretty sure he doesn't want to hear it.

"Yes. I—I told you the truth in the hospital, about not thinking clearly. Assuming that you would be okay, that you wouldn't lose the house—"

"Yeah, yeah, we covered that, let it go."

"But. I've been thinking about it. And I believe—I'm pretty sure—" He clears his throat. "I'm pretty sure, even if I _had_ been thinking clearly. Even if I'd realized you'd lose—" and his voice gets weird, here, really shaky, "I think I would have gone after her anyway, Ray."

Ray sits there, waiting for that to hit. Because obviously it's gonna hurt. But the thing that hits instead is that when he said that, Fraser leaned forward and _scooted_ a little; moved away from Ray's knees, so Ray could get up.

_He said that, he had to say that, thinking that when he said it, I was going to leave._

Ray opens his mouth to say: you dumbass, people don't apologize for things they mighta coulda done but didn't, or maybe even to say: well, guess what, I think maybe I knew your girlfriend was unarmed when I pulled the trigger, but what comes out is

"Love makes everybody do stupid things, Benny."

And Benny sags back against his legs, actually laughs a little. Not a full-on Fraser giggle, but a laugh, and says, "I suppose so."

They sit silent for a while in the dark. Ray does an exploratory shoulder rub and the muscles are all relaxed again, hallelujah. Fraser slumps back against the couch and his head kinda rolls against Ray's knee, and Ray thinks he's out, back in the Land of the Good Drugs, but Fraser smiles, eyes still closed, and mumbles.

"Nobody else calls me Benny, Ray," and then that's it, he's gone, mouth flopped open, and Christ he's probably going to drool on Ray's pants.

And Ray can't stand to wake him up. He falls asleep sitting up on the couch, thinking, man, we are both going to be so sore in the morning.

 

\--END--


End file.
